pervaded by animation.  I noticed perhaps for the first time how small and graceful were his hands.  The greatness and shapeliness of his head could not be overlooked.  From beneath shaggy and questioning brows his penetrating eyes looked straight through me.  Had his pride been wounded, his spirits dampened?  Not at all.  He was willing to face any audience anywhere.  He had told the South unpleasant truths.  He had satirized the groups that went to the making of the Republican party.  “I have a creed,” he said, “as broad as the continent.  I can preach it boldly, and without apology North or South, East or West.  I can face Toombs or Davis, if they preach sectional strife, or advocate disunion.  I can continue to point out the narrow faith of Sumner and Seward.  I shall not abate my contempt for the ragged insurrectionists who are going about the country for lack of better business, scattering dissension.  Am I to be President?  There is trouble now in Kansas and Nebraska.  Can I help that?  I have stood for the right of the people there to have slavery or not as they chose.  But if any trick is played on either of them, whether in favor of slavery or against it, they will find me on the spot ready to fight for an honest deal.”

Seeing Douglas in all his strength and self-confidence again I was happy.  We talked of the old days and drank from the old bottle.  I took him to the door, followed his retreating figure down the street, so short but so massive.  Then I went to Dorothy, to find her sleepless and unhappy.

CHAPTER L

No way to mark time quicker than by Presidentials.  Four years pass in the space of two or less; for no sooner is a President installed than committees meet for reformations and plans.  Six months between the election and the installation of a President!  When he has served a year the election is nearly two years passed.  Thus, as it seemed, the election of 1856 was upon the country before we had time to appreciate what Mr. Pierce had done.  Had he had a fair chance in such a brief period to do anything?  I was at work attending to my business, trying to etch too, but I could not keep my mind off the game of politics.  Among the tens of thousands of men in Illinois who were devoted to Douglas no one was more loyal to his ambition than I, and perhaps no one was less conspicuous.  I followed the New York Tribune, the Springfield Republican, the North American Review, the Independent, Harper’s Weekly, and the southern press, as well as the papers of Illinois.  I had made a large book of clippings, which expressed the journalistic thought of the country.  All these things put together kept me fully occupied.  Our son Reverdy was coming to an age when his schooling would need attention.  I wished to send him to England.  But that was difficult to do, because, while Dorothy was urging a trip abroad she wished to go to Italy, on account of the climate.